Month: August 2023

A clinical trial in Australia is developing a treatment for sleep disturbances caused by wildfires. The study, which is supported by Natural Hazards Research Australia, a research organization, and Federation University Australia, is now seeking participants in Australia, the United States and Canada. The trial is aimed at people who have disturbed sleep, including nightmares, insomnia or symptoms of trauma after surviving a wildfire. Participants will be asked about their experiences with wildfires and asked to rate the severity of their sleep and trauma symptoms. Those who take part complete short assessments and provide feedback through online activities. The testing is at home using sleep-specific technology and apps that track sleep. Clinical psychologist Fadia Isaac is conducting the trial with other researchers at Federation University Australia, with funding from Natural…

New Zealand on Monday removed the last of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, marking the end of a government response to the pandemic that was watched closely around the world.  Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the requirement to wear masks in hospitals and other health care facilities would end at midnight, as would a requirement for people who caught the virus to isolate themselves for seven days.  New Zealand was initially praised internationally for eliminating the virus entirely after imposing nationwide lockdowns and strict border controls.  But as the pandemic wore on and more infectious variants took hold, the nation's zero-tolerance approach became untenable. It eventually abandoned its elimination strategy.  Reflecting on the government's response to the virus over more than three years, Hipkins said that during the height of the…

For the team aboard the Okeanos Explorer off the coast of Alaska, exploring the mounds and craters of the sea floor along the Aleutian Islands is a chance to surface new knowledge about life in some of the world's deepest and most remote waters. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel is on a five-month mission aboard a reconfigured former Navy vessel run by civilians and members of the NOAA Corps. The ship, with a 48-member crew, is outfitted with technology and tools to peer deep into the ocean to gather data to share with onshore researchers in real time. The hope is that this data will then be used to drive future research. "It's so exciting to go down there and see that it's actually teeming with life,"…

A Montana judge on Monday sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate. The ruling in the first-of-its-kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change. District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions — is unconstitutional. Judge Seeley wrote in the ruling that "Montana's emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana's…

Patients who take blockbuster drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss may face life-threatening complications if they need surgery or other procedures that require empty stomachs for anesthesia. This summer's guidance to halt the medication for up to a week may not go far enough, either.  Some anesthesiologists in the U.S. and Canada say they’ve seen growing numbers of patients on the weight-loss drugs who inhaled food and liquid into their lungs while sedated because their stomachs were still full — even after following standard instructions to stop eating for six to eight hours in advance.  The drugs can slow digestion so much that it puts patients at increased risk for the problem, called pulmonary aspiration, which can cause dangerous lung damage, infections and even death, said Dr. Ion…

For a vast number of book writers, artificial intelligence is a threat to their livelihood and the very idea of creativity. More than 10,000 of them endorsed an open letter from the Authors Guild this summer, urging AI companies not to use copyrighted work without permission or compensation. At the same time, AI is a story to tell, and no longer just science fiction. As present in the imagination as politics, the pandemic, or climate change, AI has become part of the narrative for a growing number of novelists and short story writers who only need to follow the news to imagine a world upended. “I'm frightened by artificial intelligence, but also fascinated by it. There's a hope for divine understanding, for the accumulation of all knowledge, but at the…

Postal worker Eugene Gates Jr. was delivering mail in the suffocating Dallas heat this summer when he collapsed in a homeowner's yard and was taken to a hospital, where he died. Carla Gates said she's sure heat was a factor in her 66-year-old husband's death, even though she's still waiting for the autopsy report. When Eugene Gates died on June 20, the temperature was 36.6 Celsius and the heat index, which also considers humidity, had soared over 43.3 Celsius. "I will believe this until the day I die, that it was heat-related," Carla Gates said. Even when it seems obvious that extreme heat was a factor, death certificates don't always reflect the role it played. Experts say a mishmash of ways more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means we…

With field temperatures soaring above 150 degrees at times, 10-year-old baseball player Emmitt Anderson and his teammates from Alabama thought better of kneeling when they gathered near the mound for pregame prayers at a recent regional youth baseball tournament here. “It was too hot on our knees," Anderson said of the artificial surface. "We just stood up.” High heat proved considerably harder to handle than fastballs up in the strike zone at the DYB World Series this week. Temperatures reached 105 degrees, with the heat index peaking at 117. Some spectators and umpires required treatment for heat-related symptoms. A few passed out and were briefly hospitalized. “The heat was so extreme, I just knew it was a matter of time before something happened,” said Dr. Kelsey Steensland, an anesthesiologist from…

Scientists are wondering if global warming and El Nino have an accomplice in fueling this summer’s record-shattering heat. The European climate agency Copernicus reported that July was one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the old record. That’s a bump in heat that is so recent and so big, especially in the oceans and even more so in the North Atlantic, that scientists are split on whether something else could be at work. Scientists agree that by far the biggest cause of the recent extreme warming is climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that has triggered a long upward trend in temperatures. A natural El Nino, a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, adds a…

The U.S. government said Friday it will spend up to $1.2 billion for two pioneering facilities to vacuum carbon out of the air, a historic gamble on a still developing technology to combat global warming that is criticized by some experts. The two projects — in Texas and Louisiana — each aim to eliminate 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent in total to the annual emissions of 445,000 gas-powered cars. It is "the world's largest investment in engineered carbon removal in history," the Energy Department said in a statement. "Cutting back on our carbon emissions alone won't reverse the growing impacts of climate change," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the statement. "We also need to remove the CO2 that we've already put in the atmosphere." Direct…

Monsoon season can exacerbate the outbreak as infected people overwhelm hospitals ...

About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II. "There's something wrong. The number should not be going up," said Christina Wilbur, a 45-year-old Florida woman whose son shot himself to death last year. "My son should not have died," she said. "I know it's complicated, I really do. But we have to be able to do something. Something that we're not doing. Because whatever we're doing right now is not helping." Experts…

Russia launched its first mission to the moon in nearly 50 years on Friday, racing to land on the lunar south pole before a spacecraft from India gets there. The launch of the Luna-25 craft to the moon was Russia’s first since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union, and is being conducted without assistance from the European Space Agency, which ended cooperation with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The Russian lunar lander is expected to reach the moon on August 23, about the same day as an Indian craft that was launched July 14. Only three governments have managed successful moon landings: the Soviet Union, the United States and China. India and Russia are aiming to be the first to land at the moon’s south pole.…

Nearly a third of U.S. hospital pharmacists say they were forced to ration, delay or cancel treatments as drug shortages in the United States approach an all-time high, according to a survey released Thursday.   The shortages are especially critical for chemotherapy drugs used in cancer treatment regimens, with more than half of the 1,123 pharmacists surveyed saying they had to limit the use of such treatments.   The survey was conducted June 23-July 14 by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), an association that represents more than 60,000 pharmacists and technicians.  The drugs in shortage include vital therapies such as steroids, cancer treatments and antibiotics.   According to the survey, while spikes in demand cause short-term scarcity such as for diabetes drug Ozempic, most severe and persistent shortages…

The World Health Organization says traditional medicine plays a pivotal role in the health and well-being of people and the planet and should be seen as complementary to modern medicine and be integrated into national health systems. Traditional healers have used their knowledge of plants and potions for centuries to treat people with multiple ailments. Much traditional indigenous and ancestral knowledge of traditional medicine is frequently used in health care across the world. "We are seeing a lot of increasing demand and increasing interest in traditional medicine at the moment," said Rudi Eggers, WHO director for integrated health services. "Traditional medicine has become a global phenomenon." He said 170 out of 194 countries have reported to WHO "that they used traditional medicine in some form, such as acupuncture, herbal medicine,…

Paris' escape from record temperatures gripping parts of Europe this summer could be a short-term reprieve. A study finds the city could have the most heatwave-related deaths of any European capital by 2050 — when temperatures may soar to 50 C (122 F). For VOA, Lisa Bryant has more from Paris. ...

Currently spreading COVID-19 variants such as EG.5, or Eris, do not represent a major shift in COVID variants, and updated vaccines in September will offer protection, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.  "Right now, what we're seeing with the changes in the viruses, they're still susceptible to our vaccine, they're still susceptible to our medicines, they're still picked up by the tests," Dr. Mandy Cohen said in an interview on former Biden administration adviser Andy Slavitt's "In the Bubble" podcast. "We're seeing small changes that are what I would call subtypes of what we've seen before."  Updated vaccines should be available by mid- to late September, she said.  COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have created new versions of their vaccine, which were updated to target…

Indonesia's capital Jakarta topped the list as the world's most polluted city on Wednesday, having consistently ranked among the 10 most polluted cities globally since May, according to data by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.   Jakarta, which has a population of over 10 million, registers unhealthy air pollution levels nearly every day, according to IQAir.   Resident Rizky Putra lamented that the worsening air quality was putting his children's health at risk.   "I think the situation is very worrying," Rizky, 35, told Reuters TV by the side of a road in downtown Jakarta.   "So many children are sick with the same complaints and symptoms such as coughs and cold," he said.   Jakarta residents have long complained of toxic air from chronic traffic, industrial smoke and…

U.N. agencies warn health conditions are deteriorating in Sudan and neighboring countries as growing numbers of people flee escalating fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Before the conflict erupted on April 15, 4.5 million Sudanese already were displaced — more than 3.7 million inside Sudan and another 800,000 as refugees in Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. Since the rival generals went to war, the U.N. refugee agency says nearly an equal number — more than four million people — have become newly displaced. “The situation inside Sudan, where UNHCR teams are present, is untenable as needs far outweigh what is humanly possible to deliver with available resources,” said William Spindler, UNHCR spokesman. He said a lack of medicine and a shortage of staff to care for…

Darwin, the capital city of Australia’s Northern Territory, can be brutally hot and humid.   Many of its 150,000 residents seek refuge from the tropical elements in air-conditioned homes, offices and cars. But research from the Australian National University, the ANU, suggests that air-conditioning, which is often set at 21 degrees Celsius, is making people more vulnerable to heat-related death. Heatwaves are Australia’s deadliest natural hazard.  They kill more people than bushfires, floods and storms put together. The ANU asserts that “climate change is increasing heat-associated mortality particularly in hotter parts of the world.”  Simon Quilty, the study’s lead author, is from the Australian National University’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health. He told VOA that avoiding the heat and humidity may prevent people from adapting to the climate. “Being…

The World Meteorological Organization says the global average temperature for July 2023 is confirmed to be the highest on record for any month. “The month is estimated to have been around 1.5 degrees warmer than the average for 1850 to 1900s. So, the average of pre-industrial times,” said Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Some measurements began in 1850, but it was not until 1880 that scientists started to estimate average temperatures for the entire planet. Burgess said scientists who look at historical and paleoclimate and proxy records from cave deposits and other calcifying organisms, such as corals and shells, find that the observational records go back tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years. “So,…